John C. Calhoun

US Senate Famous Five

CALHOUN, John Caldwell,
statesman, born in Abbeville district, South Carolina, 18 March, 1782; died in
Washington, District of Columbia, 31 March, 1850. His grandfather, James
Calhoun, immigrated from Donegal, Ireland, to Pennsylvania in 1733, bringing
with him a family of children, of whom Patrick Calhoun was one, a boy six years
old. The family removed to western Virginia, again moved farther south, and in
1756 established the "Calhoun settlement" in the upper part of South
Carolina. This was near the frontier of the Cherokee Indians; conflicts between
them and the whites were frequent and bloody, and the Calhoun family suffered
severe loss. Patrick Calhoun was distinguished for his undaunted courage and
perseverance in these struggles, and was placed in command of provincial rangers
raised for the defense of the frontier. His resolute and active character gave
him credit among his people, and he was called to important service during the
revolutionary war, in support of
American independence. By profession he was a surveyor, and gained success
by his skill. He was a man of studious and thoughtful habits, and well versed in
English literature. His father was a Presbyterian, and he adhered to the
religion of his fathers. In 1770 he married Martha Caldwell, a native of
Virginia, daughter of an Irish Presbyterian immigrant, whose family was devoted
to the American cause, and some of whom were badly treated by the Tories.

By heredity, John Caldwell Calhoun was therefore entitled to
manhood from his race, to vigorous convictions in faith, and to patriotic
devotion to liberty and right. He was early taught to read the Bible, and
trained in Calvinistic doctrines; and it is said that he was also devoted to
history and metaphysics, but was compelled to desist from study because of
impaired health. His father was a member for many years, during and after the
revolution, of the legislature of his state, and his counsels made a deep
impression on his son, though he died when the latter was thirteen years of age.
The son remembered hearing the father say that "that government was best
which allowed the largest amount of individual liberty compatible with social
order," and that the improvements in political science would consist in
throwing off many restraints then deemed necessary to all organized society.
Until Mr. Calhoun was ready for College, he was under the instruction of his
brother-in-law, the Rev. Dr. Waddell, a Presbyterian clergyman, and went to Yale
in 1802. He evinced great originality of thought, devotion to study, and a lofty
ambition, which won him the honors of his class, and the prophetic approval of
President Dwight in the declaration, after an earnest dispute with him on the
rightful source of political power, that he would reach the greatest eminence in
life, and might attain the presidency. He studied law with H. W. Desaussure, of
South Carolina, for a time, but was graduated at Litchfield, Connecticut, and
was admitted to the bar in 1807. He took part in a meeting of the people
denouncing the British outrage on the frigate "Chesapeake," and was soon
elected to the legislature, and entered the house of representatives in
November, 1811, in his thirtieth year.

Few men were better trained for the career before him. Simple
and sincere in his tastes, habits, and manners, strict and pure in his morals,
and incorruptible in his integrity, severe and logical in his style, analytic in
his studies, and thorough in his investigations, with a genius to perceive and
comprehend the Massachusetts of elements that entered into the solution of the
problems of our political life, and with a capacity for philosophic
generalization of principles unequalled by any contemporary, he began,
continued, and ended his life, in the manifestation of the highest qualities for
debate, for disquisitions upon constitutional government and free institutions,
for discussions on foreign relations, for the investigation of political and
social economy, and for the conduct with ability of the general affairs and even
for the details of departmental administration. When Calhoun entered congress,
war with Great Britain was imminent. He was a member of the committee on foreign
affairs. He drew a report which placed before the country the issue of war, or
submission to wrong. He urged a declaration of war, and upheld the cause of his
country with an eloquence that inspired patriotic enthusiasm, and with a logical
force that gave fortitude and zeal to the army and navy as well as to the
people.

At the close of the war in 1815 the country was confronted
with questions of currency, finance, commercial policy, and internal
development, which offered to the genius of Calhoun fruitful subjects for his
original and patriotic study. He pressed upon congress the bank bill, the tariff
of 1816, and a system of roads and canals. On these questions he afterward
modified his views very greatly, but defended his real consistency of thought,
under the appearance of inconsistency, by saying that the remedies proper for
one condition of things were improper for others. A question arose in the
discussion of the act to carry into effect the treaty of peace, as to the
relation of the treaty-making authority to the powers of congress. He maintained
the supremacy of the treaty power: that it prevailed over a law of congress; and
that congress was bound to pass a law to carry a treaty into effect. The
celebrated William Pinckney, then in the zenith of his fame, declared that Mr.
Calhoun had brought into the debate "the strong power of genius from a higher
sphere than that of argument." Its power was undoubted, though the truth of
his theory may well be questioned.

In 1817
Mr.
Monroe called Mr. Calhoun to the war department, which he filled until 1825.
In this new field he won real fame; to this day the department, by the testimony
of recent secretaries, feels the impress of his genius for organization and for
the methodical adjustment of the functions of its various branches to each other
and to its head. In his report to congress in 1823 he truly said that in a large
disbursement of public money through a great number of disbursing agents, there
had been no defalcation nor loss of a cent to the government" that he had
reduced the expenses of the army from $451 to $287 per man, with no loss of
efficiency or comfort. He organized the department by a bill that he drew for
the purpose ; and, under rules prescribed by him, introduced order and
accountability in every branch of service, and established a system that has
survived, in a large degree, to this day. Mr. Clay, in his eulogy on Mr.
Calhoun, said : "Such was the high estimate I formed of his transcendent
talents, that if, at the end of his service in the executive department under
Mr. Monroe's administration, the duties of which he performed with such signal
ability, he had been called to the highest office in the government, I should
have felt perfectly assured that, under his auspices, the honor, the prosperity,
and the glory of our country would have been safely placed." During his
service in the department, contention arose between him and General Jackson as
to the conduct of the latter in the Seminole war, which was the chief cause of
the breach between them during Jackson's administration.

In 1824 there were four candidates for the presidency, which
resulted in the election of
John Q.
Adams by the house of representatives. A large majority elected Mr. Calhoun
vice-president. His vice-presidency marks the beginning of Mr. Calhoun's life as
a constitutional statesman. He said in 1837: "The station, from its leisure,
gave me a good opportunity to study the genius of the prominent measure of the
day, called then the American system, by which I profited." From that time
he by profound study mastered the principles of our constitutional system, and
may be said to have founded a school of political philosophy, of which the
doctrines are maintained in his speeches, reports, and public writings. Mr.
Clay's American system, to which Mr. Calhoun referred, was in full success. The
bank, the protective policy, the internal improvement system, and the
"general welfare" rule for constitutional construction, composed this
celebrated policy.

In 1828
General Jackson was elected president and Mr. Calhoun re-elected
vice-president. The Jackson administration was the period during which the
Democratic Party under Jackson and the Whig party under Clay were organized for
their great struggle for ascendancy. Mr. Calhoun took from the beginning the
most prominent part in the attitude assumed by South Carolina against the
protective system, which had reached its climax in the tariff law of i828. In
December, 1828, he drew up the "Exposition," which, with amendments, was
adopted by the legislature of South Carolina; also an address, 26 July, 1831, on
the relations of the states to the general government; also a report for the
legislature in November, 1831; also an address to the people of the state at the
close of that session; also a letter to Governor Hamilton oi1 state
interposition, 28 August, 1832; also an address to the people of the United
States by the convention of South Carolina in November, 1832. In these papers he
maintained the doctrine of state interposition, or "nullification."

During Jackson's first term the influence of
Mr. Van Buren became paramount with the president, and the alienation
between the latter and Mr. Calhoun became irreconcilable. Mr. Van Buren was
elected vice-president in 1832. The South Carolina convention in November, 1832,
passed the ordinance nullifying the tariff laws of 1828 and 1832, and Mr.
Calhoun was elected to the senate and took his seat in December. having resigned
the vice-presidency. He appeared as the champion of his state, and defender of
its ordinance of nullification, standing alone, but firm and undaunted. Both
parties were opposed to him, and the administration menacingly see a man of less
intellect or less courage would have shrunk from the conflict. But he was
courageous in conviction, and fearless of personal consequences. He gave up the
second and surrendered all hope of the first office in the country, to defend
his state in her solitary attitude of opposition to the protective policy.

The president's proclamation of November, 1832, was followed
by the proposed "force bill." Mr. Calhoun, in February, 1833, made an
elaborate speech against it. To this
Mr.
Webster replied with great fullness upon certain resolutions proposed by Mr.
Calhoun on the general question, whereupon Mr. Calhoun called up his
resolutions, and made, 26 February, 1833, a speech of extraordinary force, to
which Mr. Webster never replied. The issue in this debate of the giants was on
the first resolution, as follows: "That the people of the several states
comprising these United States are united as parties to a constitutional
compact, to which the people of each state acceded, as a separate and sovereign
community, each binding itself by its own particular ratification; and that the
union, of which the said compact is the bond, is a union between the states
ratifying the same."

Mr. Webster denied the "compact" theory, and is said
to have made use of much of the materials gathered by Judge Story in the
preparation of the first volume of his commentaries on the constitution,
published in 1833. Almost all of the Democratic Party, and many of the Whigs,
held that the constitution was a compact, but denied the right of nullification
by a state; and some of these denied the right of secession to a state, holding
the indissolubility of the union of these states because bound by a perpetual
compact. They admitted Mr. Calhoun's premise of "compact," but denied his
conclusions. Mr. Webster denied his premise, and therefore his conclusion. Many,
also, who believed in the right of secession, denied the right of nullification.
Mr. Calhoun stood, therefore, alone in the senate, main-raining the premise of a
"constitutional compact." and his conclusion of the right of a state to
nullify a law while remaining in the union, or to secede from the union
entirely.

The true nature of the doctrine of nullification was this :
1. It was claimed as a remedy within the union, reserved to the state according
to the constitution ; a remedy for evils in the union; and to save, but not to
dissolve, it. 2. It was claimed for the state, as a party to the compact, to
declare when it was violated, and to pronounce void an unconstitutional law ;
not to annul a valid law, but to declare void an unconstitutional law. 3. Its
effect was (as claimed) to make wholly inoperative the law so declared void,
because unconstitutional, within the state, and it seems that the United States
should, according to the doctrine, thereupon suspend its operation elsewhere,
and appeal to the states to amend the constitution by a new grant of power to
make valid the law so de-dared void by the state. 4. This declaration of nullity
of a law could not be made by the government of a state, but only by a
convention of its people; that is, that the people of a state in convention,
which had ratified in convention the constitution originally, should have
power-to declare unconstitutional an act done by the government created by that
constitution.

The genius Of Mr. Calhoun was equal to the plausible and
powerful support of this theory, which, however inconclusive from his premise of
the constitutional compact, can not impair the truth of that premise, which,
with transcendent ability and accurate historic research, he established on an
impregnable foundation. The discussion had valuable results. Mr. Clay introduced
his "compromise tariff" of 1833, which was passed before the session
closed, with the support of Mr. Calhoun. It provided for a gradual reduction of
duties during ten years, after which duties should be laid on a revenue basis.
This issue ended, the re-charter of the bank of the United States, and the
removal of the deposits there from by President Jackson, and the general
question of currency, became prominent. Executive patronage also came into the
debates of the last term of President Jackson: On all these questions Mr.
Calhoun acted with the Whig party. He preferred the bank of the United States to
what was called the "pet bank system" of the executive. He condemned what
he deemed executive usurpation, and denounced the influence of patronage as
tending to the organization of parties upon the principle "of the cohesive
power of public plunder." He claimed to belong to neither party, but to lead
the band of "state-rights" men, whose course was directed by principle,
and not by the motives of party triumph or personal ambition.

He took no part in the presidential election of 1836; but on
the accession of Mr. Van Buren to the presidency, and in the extra session
called by him in 1837, to consider the financial panic of that year, he took
ground for a total separation of the government from a bank or banks, favored
the constitutional treasury plan, and acted generally with the Democratic Party.
General Harrison was elected president in 1840, but died 4 April, 1841, and was
succeeded by Vice-President John Tyler. An extra session of congress was called
in the summer of 1841, when the struggle of Mr. Clay for the restoration of his
American system--including a bank, protective tariff, internal improvements, and
a distribution of the proceeds of the public lands--brought on a memorable
discussion, in which Mr. Calhoun was a leader, and facile precepts, of the
Democratic Party.

If the student of our history will consult the speeches of
Mr. Calhoun in the senate, on the bank question generally, and on currency, from
1837 till 1842, he will find how thorough his analysis of these abstruse
questions was, and how broad were his generalizations of principles. When the
tariff question came up again in 1842, the compromise of 1833 was rudely
overthrown, and the protective system placed in the ascendant. Mr. Calhoun
discussed the question in several able speeches, but delivered one 5 August,
1842. of comprehensive force, in which he discriminated with analytic precision
between a revenue and a protective duty, holding a tariff for revenue only to be
constitutional and right. He discussed the question of wages, and closed his
speech with an animation not to be forgotten by one, who heard him utter these
sentences: "The great popular party is already rallied almost en masse around
the banner which is leading the party to its final triumph. The few that still
lag will soon be rallied under its ample folds. On that banner is inscribed:
Free trade ; low duties; no debt separation from banks ; economy ;
retrenchment, and strict adherence to the constitution. Victory in such a cause
will be great and glorious ; and long will it perpetuate the liberty and
prosperity of the country."

The hostility of
President
Tyler to the American system made its restoration during his administration
only partial; but questions of deeper import came before the country, from which
results of great consequence have followed. Mr. Tyler had frequently resorted to
the veto power to defeat
Mr. Clay's
measures. Mr. Clay proposed an amendment of the constitution for the abrogation
of the veto power, and on 28 February, 1842, Mr. Calhoun delivered a speech
against this proposition, he vindicated and sustained the veto as an essential
part of "the beautiful and profound system established by the constitution."
The proposition never came to a vote.

In February, 1844, the unfortunate explosion of a gun on the
deck of the "Princeton," near Washington, robbed the country of two
members of President Tyler's cabinet. Mr. Calhoun, who had ceased to be senator,
in March, 1843, filled the vacancy in the state department occasioned by the
death of Judge Upshur. The new secretary considered two questions of great
importance. At that time the union had no Pacific population, California had not
been acquired, and Oregon was not yet within our grasp. Great Britain had an
adverse claim to Oregon. Our title rested on discovery and the French treaty of
1803. Access to it there was none but by sea around Cape Horn or across the
isthmus. Mr. Calhoun vindicated our rights in a diplomatic correspondence upon
grounds on which it was finally adjusted by treaty in 1846. In his speech on the
Oregon question, 16 March, 1846, he spoke of the physical elements of
civilization--steam and electricity. As to the latter (when the telegraph was in
its infancy) with wonderful prevision he said: "Magic wires are stretching
themselves in all directions over the earth, and, when their mystic meshes shall
have been united and perfected, our globe itself will become endowed with
sensitiveness, so that whatever touches on any one point will be instantly felt
on every other." Again -- "Peace is pre-eminently our policy. Providence
has given us an inheritance stretching across the entire continent from ocean to
ocean. Our great mission, as a people, is to occupy this vast domain; to
replenish it with an intelligent, virtuous, and industrious population to
convert the forests into cultivated fields to drain the swamps and morasses, and
cover them with rich harvests; to build up cities, towns, and villages in every
direction, and to unite the whole by the most rapid intercourse between all the
parts. Secure peace, and time, under the guidance of a sagacious and cautious
policy, 'a wise and masterly inactivity,' will speedily accomplish the whole.
War can make us great; but let it never be forgotten that peace only can make us
both great and free."

Another question, the annexation of Texas, occupied his mind,
and gave full scope to his fertile genius. To our internal concerns it was as
important as to our foreign relations. It can only be fully comprehended by
considering the slavery question, with which it became involved in the act of
annexation and in its consequences. In the federal convention of 1787 the
diversity of industries growing up in states where slavery did and did not exist
was clearly foreseen. This difference was marked by the terms northern and
southern, slaveholding and non-slaveholding, commercial and agricultural states.
The well-known antipathy of people, among whom slavery does not exist, to that
form of labor gave rise to strong feelings in the northern states for its
abolition. Among southern people there was much of regret that it had ever been
established; but how to deal with it was to them a practical question for their
most serious consideration. As has been well said, "We had the wolf by the
ears--to hold on, was a great evil. to let go, who could estimate the
consequences?"

It was important as a question of property, but of
far greater moment as a social and political problem. What relations, social and
political, should exist between these diverse races, when both were free and
equal in citizenship? One thing the south felt most strongly. The solution of
this difficult problem should be left to those who were personally interested in
the continuance of slavery~ and involved in the consequences of its abolition.
Accordingly, the federal constitution left it, for the states to deal with,
threw around it interstate guarantees, and put it beyond the reach of the
federal government. Without these guarantees, the union could not have been
formed. The two sections watched their respective growth in population, and
their settlement of our territories, as bearing on their related powers in the
federal government. The north had a large majority in the house of
representatives, and in the
Electoral College. In the senate, by a species of common law, an equilibrium
was maintained between the sections, one free state being admitted with one
slave state for nearly fifty years of our history.

In 1820-'1 the Missouri agitation arose, which was quieted
for the moment by an agreement that no state should be admitted north of lat.
36° 30' which allowed slavery, while south of that line they might be admitted
with or without slavery, as the people of the state should decide. Many
constitutional lawyers always denied the constitutionality of this
Missouri compromise, though it is said Mr. Calhoun admitted its
constitutionality, when applied to the territories, but not as to a state. With
a senate equally divided between the sections, the southern states felt secure
against action hostile to slavery by the government. But the equilibrium of the
sections in that body being overthrown, they would be subject to the will of a
northern majority in both houses, limited only by its interpretation of its
constitutional power over slavery. In 1835, Texas, peopled by emigrants from the
union, but chiefly from the southern states, carrying their slaves with them,
won its independence at San Jacinto, which was acknowledged by the United States
in 1836. The territory had once been ours; its people were of our own flesh and
blood; emigration pressed into its fields from the south; the government of
Great Britain was threatening to keep Texas independent, and, by procuring the
abolition of slavery there, to operate to stop slavery extension toward the
southwest, and place an abolition frontier upon the borders of Louisiana and
Arkansas.

Mr. Calhoun was too sagacious not to see the hostile policy
of England. In a series of papers he exposed the scheme, and negotiated a treaty
with Texas for her incorporation into the union. The treaty failed, but the
annexation of Texas became a pivotal question in the presidential election of
1844, and
Mr. Polk was elected chiefly upon that issue. Many people looked upon it as
an increase of the slave power in the union, but the admission of Texas was made
subject, as to any new states to be formed out of it, to the provisions of the
Missouri compromise. Mr. Calhoun was elected to the senate on retiring from the
state department, and did all he could for the peaceable adjustment of the
Oregon question, and also to prevent war with Mexico. He deprecated the war with
Mexico, and in strong terms de-elated it was unnecessary. When it was finally
determined on, he was greatly disturbed, and pre-dieted evils, which even he
could not see.

He said : "It has dropped a curtain between the present
and the future, which to me is impenetrable; and, for the first time since I
have been in public life, I am unable to see the future. It has closed the first
volume of our political history under the constitution, and opened the second,
and no mortal can tell what will be written in it." In his speech on the
"three-million bill "(9 February, 1847) he explained that what constituted
this "impenetrable curtain" was the acquisition of territory as the
result of the war, and the slavery question, which would be involved in the
legislation respecting it. The slavery question, during the administrations of
Jackson and
Van
Buren, had been agitated in many forms. Abolition petitions had poured in
upon congress, and the power of congress had been invoked to prevent the
transmission through the mails of abolition documents. On this point Mr. Calhoun
differed with President Jackson ; the former maintaining in an able report
(February, 1836) that the mail could not be the instrument for incendiary
purposes against the laws of the states, but that congress had no power to
decide what should be transmitted and what not, without state action.

Soon after the Mexican war began, the acquisition of
territory from Mexico was strongly insisted on; and at once the anti-slavery
party proposed what was known as the Wihnot proviso, by which it was declared
that slavery should never be allowed in any Mexican territory acquired by
treaty. The agitation convulsed the country. On 19 February, 1847, Mr. Calhoun
set forth his views in certain resolutions, of which the substance is in the
first two: "That the territories of the United States belong to the several
states composing the union, and are held by them as their joint and common
property; that congress, as the joint agent and representative of the states of
the union, has no right to make any law or do any act whatever that shall,
directly or by its effects, make any discrimination between the states of this
union by which any of them shall be deprived of its full and equal right in any
territory of the United States acquired or to be acquired."

Chief-Justice Taney, delivering the opinion of the court,
held the same doctrine in the
Dred Scott decision in 1857, in which six of the nine judges concurred. The
agitation continued until the session of 1849-'50, when the compromise measures
were proposed and passed. Mr. Calhoun made his last speech (read for him by
Senator Mason, of Virginia) upon this subject, March, 1850. With the exception
of a few remarks made afterward in reply to Mr. Foote and to Mr. Webster, he
never again addressed the senate.

In the last years of his life he prepared two works, the one
"A Disquisition on Government," and the other "A Discourse on the Constitution
and Government of the United States," both comprehended in a volume of 400
pages. These methodical treatises on the science of government and the federal
constitution place him in the highest position among original thinkers upon
political philosophy. In estimating Mr. Calhoun's position absolutely and
relatively, he is liable to a less favorable verdict than his merits demand. He
represented a southern state, defended her slave institutions, belonged to a
minority section, and his views have been condemned by the majority section of
the country. The newspaper and periodical press, therefore, will deny him the
pre-eminence which we claim for him as a broad and philosophic statesman, as a
constitutional lawyer, and as a leader of thought in the field of political
philosophy. His fame results from the possession of an ardent, sincere, and
intense soul which gave impulse and motive to a mind endowed with extraordinary
analytic force, acute and subtle in its insight, fertile in suggestion, full of
resources, careful, laborious, and profound in research and comprehensive in its
deduction of general principles. He had a large imagination, though he displayed
little fancy. His vigorous, compact, and clean-cleaving logic put the objects of
his creative power into sharply defined shapes, arranged in perspicuous order,
with a severe, trenchant, and condensed rhetoric.

In his reply on 10 March, 1838, to Mr. Clay's personal attack
he seems to have defined his own characteristics while he denied them to his
great opponent. He said: " I cannot retort on the senator the charge of being
metaphysical. I cannot accuse him of possessing the powers of analysis and
generalization, those higher faculties of the mind (called metaphysical by those
who do not possess them) which decompose and resolve into their elements the
complex masses of ideas that exist in the world of mind, as chemistry does the
bodies that surround us in the material world, and without which these deep and
hidden causes which are in constant action and producing such mighty changes in
the condition of society would operate unseen and undetected .... Throughout the
whole of my service I have never followed events, but have taken my stand in
advance, openly and freely avowing my opinions on all questions, and leaving it
to time and experience to condemn or approve my course." He believed the
constitution to be a "beautiful and profound system," and the union under it
an inestimable blessing.

His " Disquisition " and "Discourse" were
devoted to showing how the true philosophy of government was realized in that
constitution. An epitome of his philosophy may be attempted, though it will fail
to do it justice. He believed in the rights of the individual man, for whose
benefit society and government exist--" society being primary, to preserve
and perfect our race; and government secondary and subordinate, to preserve and
perfect society. Both are, however, necessary to the existence and well-being of
our race and equally of divine ordination." But government ordained to
protect. may, if not guarded, be made a means of oppression. " That by which
this is prevented, by whatever name called, is what is meant by constitution
....
Constitution stands to government as government stands to society ....
Constitution is the contrivance of man, while government is of divine
ordination. Man is left to perfect what the wisdom of the Infinite ordained as
necessary to preserve the race."

He then takes up the question, How shall government be
constituted so as by its own organism to resist the tendency to abuse of power ?
The first device is the responsibility of rulers through suffrage to the ruled
under proper guards and with sufficient enlightenment of the voters to
understand their rights and their duty. This secures those who elect against
abuse by those who are elected. But this is far from all that is needed. When
society is homogeneous in interests this may suffice, for it insures a control
of no man's right by any other than himself and those who have common interest
with him. But where, as is generally the case, society has diverse and inimical
interests, then suffrage is no security, for each representative speaks the will
of each constituency, and constituencies, through representation, may war on
each other, and the majority interests may devour those of the minority through
their representatives. Suffrage thus only transfers the propensity to abuse
power from constituencies to representatives, and despotism is secured through
that suffrage which was devised to prevent it. The remedy for this evil is to be
found in such an organism as will give to each of the diverse interests a
separate voice and permit the majority of each to speak in a separate branch of
the organism, and not take the voice of the majority of the whole community as
the only expression of the people's will. To do the last bases government on the
numerical or absolute majority" to do the first is to base it on the
"concurrent constitutional majority." The latter is a government of the
whole people; the former only of a majority of them.

This principle is illustrated by all the so-called checks and
balances in all constitutional governments, and by the concurrent majority of
numbers in the house of representatives and of states in the senate in our own
federal system. This principle, established with scientific precision, is the
fruitful source of all of Mr. Calhoun's doctrines. His vindication of the veto
power was against the claim for the numerical majority. His nullification was
the requirement of the concurrent majority of the several states to a law of
doubtful constitutionality. His proposed amendment of the constitution by a dual
executive, through which each section would have a distinct representation, was
an application of the same principle ; and his intense opposition to the
admission of California, by which the senate was to be controlled by a northern
majority, was his protest against the overthrow of the concurrent consent of the
south, through an equipoised senate, to the legislative action of congress. Mr.
Calhoun saw the south in a minority in all branches of the government, and he
desired, by giving to the south a concurrent and distinct voice in the organism
of our system to secure her against invasion of her rights by a hostile
majority, and thus to make her safe in the union.

When the abolition party was small in numbers and weak in
organization, and public men treated its menaces with contempt, Mr. Calhoun saw
the cloud like a man's hand which was to overspread our political heavens. His
prophetic eye saw the danger and his voice proclaimed it. In looking at the
growth of the abolition feeling in 1836, he predicted that
Mr.
Webster"would, however reluctant, be compelled to yield to that doctrine
or be driven into obscurity." He said, further: "Be assured that
emancipation itself would not satisfy these fanatics. That gained, the next step
would be to raise the Negroes to a social and political equality with the
whites."

In 1849 he wrote the "Address to the People of the South,"
and, with a precision that is startling, drew the following picture of the
results of abolition: " If it [emancipation] ever should be effected, it will
be through the agency of the federal government, controlled by the dominant
power of the northern states of the confederacy against the resistance and
struggle of the southern. It can then only be effected by the prostration of the
white race, and that would necessarily engender the bitterest feelings of
hostility between them and the north; but the reverse would be the case between
the blacks of the south and the people of the north. Owing their emancipation to
them, they would regard them as friends, guardians, and patrons, and centre
accordingly all their sympathy in them. The people of the north would not fail
to reciprocate, and to favor them instead of the whites. Under the influence of
such feelings, and impelled by fanaticism and love of power, they would not;
stop at emancipation. Another step would be taken, to raise them to a political
and social equality with their former owners by giving them the right of voting
and holding public offices under the federal government .... But when once
raised to an equality they would become the fast political associates of the
north, acting and voting with them on all questions, and by this
political union between them holding the south in complete subjection. The
blacks and the profligate whites that might unite with them would become the
principal recipients of federal offices and patronage, and would in consequence
be raised above the whites in the south in the political and social scale. We
would, in a word, change conditions with them--a degradation greater than has
ever yet fallen to the lot of a free and enlightened people, and one from which
we could not escape but by fleeing the homes of ourselves and ancestors, and by
abandoning our country to our former slaves, to become the permanent abode of
disorder, anarchy, poverty, misery, and wretchedness."

The estimate we have placed upon the genius of this
remarkable man is confirmed by the touching tributes of his great rivals at the
time of his death. Henry Clay, after paying a tribute to his private character
and to his patriotism and public honor, said: "He possessed an elevated
genius of the highest order. In felicity of generalization of the subjects of
which his mind treated I have seen him surpassed by no one, and the charm and
captivating influence of his colloquial powers have been felt by all who have
conversed with him."

Daniel Webster, his chief competitor in constitutional
debate, said: " He was a man of undoubted genius and of commanding talent.
All the country and all the world admit that .... I think there is not one of us
but felt, when he last addressed us from his seat in the senate, his form still
erect, with clear tones, and an impressive and, I may say, an imposing manner,
who did not feel that he might imagine that we saw before us a senator of Rome
when Rome survived .... He had the basis, the indispensable basis of all high
character, and that was unspotted integrity, unimpeached honor, and character.
If he had aspirations, they were high and honorable and noble Firm in his
purpose, perfectly patriotic and honest, aside from that large regard for that
species of distinction that conducted him to eminent stations for the benefit of
the republic, I do not believe he had a selfish motive or selfish feeling."

Mr. Everett once said: " Calhoun, Clay, Webster! I name
them in alphabetical order. What other precedence can be assigned them? Clay the
great leader, Webster the great orator, Calhoun the great thinker."
John Stuart Mill speaks of the great ability of his posthumous work, and of its
author as "a man who has displayed powers as a speculative political thinker
superior to any who has appeared in American polities since the authors of ' The
Federalist.'"

It has been said that Calhoun labored to destroy the Union,
that he might be the chief of a southern confederacy because he could not be
president of the Union. The writer remembers an interview that he witnessed
between Calhoun and a friend within a month of his death, when the hopes and
strife's of his ambition were soon, as he knew, to be laid in the grave. The
friend asked him if nothing could be done to save the Union. "Will not the
Missouri compromise do it?" He replied, the light in his great eyes
expressing an intense solemnity of feeling that can never be forgotten, "With
my constitutional objections I could not vote for it, but I would acquiesce in
it to save this Union!"

Mr. Calhoun in his private life as husband, father, friend,
neighbor, and citizen, was pure, upright, sincere, honest, and beyond reproach.
He was simple and unpretending in manners, rigid and strict in his morals,
temperate and discreet in his habits; genial, earnest, and fascinating in
conversation, and magnanimous in his public and private relations. He was
beloved by his family and friends, honored and almost idolized by his state, and
died as he had lived, respected and revered for his genius and his honorable
life by his contemporaries of all parties. He was stainless in private and
public life, as a man. a patriot, and a philosopher, and his fame is a noble
heritage to his country and to mankind. The view on page 500 represents the
summer residence and office of Mr. Calhoun at Fort Hill, to which during his
career many men of distinction repaired to enjoy his society and his liberal
hospitality. Calhoun's works were collected and edited by Richard K. Cralle (6
vols., New York, 1853-'4).

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MATHEW BRADY GALLERY, NY - John C. Calhoun
... John C. Calhoun 1782 - 1850, Mathew Brady photographed John C. Calhoun
around the
winter of 1849 and used the image as the basis for the production of many ...

ALGenWeb : Biography :
John C. Calhoun
John Caldwell Calhoun, 1782-1850. John C. Calhoun is best remembered as an
American
statesman and political philosopher. From 1811 until his death, Calhoun ...

CALHOUN, John Caldwell, (cousin of John
Ewing Colhoun and Joseph Calhoun), a Representative and a Senator from South
Carolina and a Vice President of the United States; born near Calhoun Mills,
Abbeville District (now Mount Carmel, McCormick County), S.C., March 18, 1782;
attended the common schools and private academies; was graduated from Yale
College in 1804; studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1807, and commenced
practice in Abbeville, S.C.; also engaged in agricultural pursuits; member,
State house of representatives 1808-1809; elected as a Republican to the Twelfth
and to the three succeeding Congresses and served from March 4, 1811, to
November 3, 1817, when he resigned; Secretary of War in the Cabinet of President
James Monroe 1817-1825; elected vice president of the United States in 1824 with
President John Quincy Adams; reelected in 1828 with President Andrew Jackson and
served from March 4, 1825, to December 28, 1832, when he resigned, having been
elected to the United States Senate on December 12, 1832, to fill the vacancy
caused by the resignation of Robert Y. Hayne; reelected in 1834 and 1840 and
served from December 29, 1832, until his resignation, effective March 3, 1843;
Secretary of State in the Cabinet of President John Tyler; 1844-1845; again
elected to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the
resignation of Daniel E. Huger; reelected in 1846 and served from November 26,
1845, until his death in Washington, D.C., March 31, 1850; chairman, Committee
on Finance (Twenty-ninth Congress); interment in St. Philip’s Churchyard,
Charleston, S.C.

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